American Buffalo Chip Redux

Roy Rockwood - Pseudonym?

Everyone would benefit from nursing a conceptual enmity with someone who has ascended the mountain tops of worldly success. It's the American way, and it's good for you. Rather than diffusing remorse and shame for your own shortcomings into a generalized disdain for your betters (a meager act of psychological transference and hardly deserving of praise), I find that channeling my aspirations and fears into a targeted, focused, and monomaniacal hatred for a few notable individuals helps to clarify my own plight. Most people are familiar with this mental strategy through their involvement in politics (i.e., hating Bush drew people into the national debate and helped them to understand the issues). While this kind of negativity must be emitted responsibly and in moderation, it is nonetheless necessary for the healthy functioning of our emotional lives. One such repository of my existential loathing has long been David Mamet. While I've never met the man (and likely never will), I nevertheless permit myself the luxury of regarding him as little more than a seething mating ball of contemptible, ego-centric, talentless ineptitude. While I have enjoyed some performances of Mamet's work, I could never understand how someone so profoundly out of touch with humanity, cocooned so snugly in his own ass, could create a reputation for himself as an adept chronicler of the human condition. And so it was with great relish that I read the review in the New York Times of his newest play, "Romance":

"...'Romance' fits into that unloved category that might called be the Work of Contempt, created when an artist becomes weary of hearing about his limitations and perhaps equally weary of working within them."

"...he is pushing an envelope that has already been through the shredder."

"...for all its madcap frenzy, 'Romance' feels fatigued from the get-go. At their considerable best, Mr. Mamet's plays provide shots of full-strength theatrical adrenaline. This one has the impact of an over-the-counter sleeping pill."

Normally not one to gloat over bad reviews, I can't help but feel a little vindicated; which is the best that an unsuccessful little pissant like me can do. Like my mom always said, "Whatever you do, do your best". As an interesting sidebar, "Romance" is an exceedingly gay play about lispy, limpwristed stereotypes prancing about and making jackasses of themselves.